MultiModal Narrative

          Its like watching a mid life crisis, where one feels lonely with no salvation. The thoughts that you have seen it all, I had all these dreams, and I am not where I thought I’d be. Everyone sounds the same, everything in boring, yet he suddenly finds something different. Both the film and the novel followed this theme of a mid life crisis. The feeling of loneliness and the way you can suddenly stumble into an intimate relationship when traveling are large themes also. When traveling, one is open to new experiences, everything is different, thus opens people up to more intimate relations. The puppets have a split in the face that the film makers decided to not try to hide and this add a visual identity to the characters, as if they are all wearing masks. All of the characters have very similar faces, except the main man and the woman he becomes infatuated with has a different face compared to everyone else.
         The pacing of the piece is very slow overall, with stop motion the audience needs more time to read what is happening, thus effecting the overall feel of the film. The juxtaposition between the voice acting and the media is interesting, for the voices are super gestural in tone where as the puppet’s expressions are not very expressionistic, but their overall body language reads. Authorship is not pure, almost always when creating a work it is collaborative. For example, Dickens would work with his illustrators to help figure out the story or writers will work with editors who can help a lot with a work. Authorship now is more about celebrity status than its quality. Shakespeare is another example, we know that he had collaborators, many had played the parts, all we have are the stage manager’s play scripts for Shakespeare never published his work. As far as we know these versions of his plays may be completely different than what he had originally written.
          With the two films shown in class, one raises the question on why they were animated for they are so realistic to life. There seems to be a few scenes that show fantastic imagery like with the man's face glitching out in the first film and the car wrecking in the store. With the cuban film, the character design enhances the overall film for the fluidity of the drawings match the fluidity of the music. The rotoscoping is very evident, and I am not a fan of that style, but appreciate the outcome of the film. The overall content of both films is very adult, from having sex to cussing to fighting. 
       From the reading, I found the overall style of the graphic novel to be very interesting. I enjoyed the juxtaposition between the character design on the man vs the woman. The architectural design of the man enhances his inability to change where as Hana is drawn completely different, but the characters work together. The narration was written as if one could hear him, and the narrator was very different for it was his still born twin brother. The ending was frustrating, but the overall comic was enjoyable. There are three separate parts, the now, the past, and his fantasies. The fluidity of the narration and storytelling made the novel interesting and though the overall story is not the happiest one it was still a good book.

Author's Voice:

          Dead Man, Mystery Train, now Down by Law, director Jim Jarmusch definitely has a style to his films. Overall his films are similar in the style of cinematography, two in black and white, loves to follow characters walking through the environment, and staying on characters for uncomfortable amounts of time. He never hurries the story along and tend to be pretty minimalistic in set and design. There never seems to really be a clear plot, but all the stories are about a journey, but not a specific destination be the end. Dead Man, the lead guy is an accountant and goes to this tiny town for work, doesn't get the job, kills a guy, and is now on the run.

          Mystery Train has two Japanese  teenagers wanting to see the sights of Tennessee for they love rock and roll, but no set destination or goal in mind. Down by Law, the guys escape jail, but have no idea where they are going, just that they got to go. His films feel like the audience jumped into these peoples lives and are watching them in real time, no montages to condense time. Music seems to have an importance in his films as well, all playing music from the time or mentioning artists from the time. Mystery Train has a parallel narrative, three successive stories that take place in a small Memphis hotel on the same night. All of his characters tend to be loners, losers, low on money, petty, con men, yet they are all likable to a point. I would never want to know them or have any association with them, but as a viewer you don't hate them for most are not the best people but they are framed by others to be viewed as worse.

          Jarmusch seems to enjoy diving into different cultures in these films, Dead Man being the old west, Mystery Train showing the difference between Japanese and old American Culture, and with Down by Law shows a low class americans and an Italian immigrant. There is no female development, not a lot of screen time, and have no power, which I didn't enjoy about these three films. The main characters seem to be brought together through circumstances and that alone for they would never have been together otherwise, and this is the same for loyalty, everyone was out for themselves. He loves throwing in a foreign character who doesn't understand the culture they have been thrown into, and that way the audience gets to see an interesting point of view. The character development throughout the film is mainly accomplished through action and dialogue. They all are outsiders and it gives us a different point of view with a dry sense of humor and unexpected obstacles popping up everywhere. Yet, in the films it feels very empty in all the landscapes, the west and the cities all feel empty.

          Meshes of the Afternoon, Ritual in Transfigured Time, and Meditation on Violence are three films directed by Maya Deren , born Eleanora Derenkowskaia (Russian) was one of the most important American experimental filmmakers and entrepreneurial promoters of the avant-garde in the 1940s and 1950s. Deren was also a choreographer, dancer, film theorist, poet, lecturer, writer and photographer.

          In 1943, Deren purchased a used 16 mm Bolex camera with some of the inheritance money after her father's death from a heart attack. This camera captured her first and best-known film, Meshes of the Afternoon, in Los Angeles in collaboration with Hammid. Meshes of the Afternoon is recognized as a seminal American avant-garde film. It is the first narrative film in avant-garde American film, which critics have said took on an autobiographical tone - for women and the individual. The loose repetition and rhythm cuts short any expectation of a conventional narrative, heightening the dream-like qualities. The camera initially avoids her face, which precludes identification with a particular woman's face. Multiple selves appear, shifting between the first and third person, suggesting that the super-ego is at play, which is in line with the psychoanalytic Freudian staircase and flower motifs. Very aware of the "personal film," her first piece explores a woman's subjectivity and her relation to the external world.

          By her fourth film, Deren discussed in An Anagram that she felt special attention should be given to unique possibilities of time and that the form should be ritualistic as a whole. Ritual in Transfigured Time began in August and was completed in 1946. It explored the fear of rejection and the freedom of expression in abandoning ritual, looking at the details as well as the bigger ideas of the nature and process of change. Deren's Meditation on Violence was made in 1948. Chao-Li Chi's performance obscures the distinction between violence and beauty. It was an attempt to "abstract the principle of ongoing metamorphosis," found in Ritual in Transfigured Time, though Deren felt it was not as successful in the clarity of that idea, brought down by its philosophical weight. Halfway through the film, the sequence is rewound, producing a film loop.

Adaption:

          The screenplay I read was Devils Wear Prada, and I was amazed at the detail in the script. One could visualize the transitions and envision what the outfits could look like. I would choose to be the costume designer for this film is so focused on the fashion. I would enjoy researching what was in the latest shows at the time, the main pieces of fashion, and take inspiration from that. I love the juxtaposition of Andy at the beginning of the film compared to the other models of high fashion at the company. Looking at the screenplay from an actor’s point of view, I can see the how relatable Andy is without seeing a performance. The way her lines and actions are described, I see how audience members would instantly fall for her and care about her as a character. I find that pretty cool, and with a good performance from the actress, this can only enhance the movie’s enjoyment.

Goose Father


Most essential visual moments:

·      Setting: Apartment-balcony, Karaoke

·      Main theme: His loneliness, missing his family after 6 months and needed contact

·      Color scheme – cool greys and blue where the boy would have a cool palate

·      Protagonist: Gilho

·      Ages would be changed to 25 and 35

·      Scenes:

o   Need to establish that he has a family and that he is sending money to them / show his loneliness

o   The arrival of the boy – sitting on the door matt

o   He hates the goose – the boy never mentioned a goose

o   6 the next morning - boy made breakfast (uncomfortable to see a man preforming a woman’s role) – talks about his poetry

o   Walks in on the boy talking to the goose, tells him that the goose is his mom reincarnated – shows the difference in their thoughts

o   Montage – of the boy clinging to him, sponge on his feet saying poems

o   The boy felt emotional after watching a whale documentary, he took him to karaoke to cheer him up

o   Talking to wife about how weird the boy is, wife says to get a new one

o   Karaoke scene – the boy tried to kiss him, slaps the boy, boy disappears

o   He worries about the boy, telling the police

o   Goes to get a green card, man said he was so lucky, but he didn’t feel like it

o   Walking through the slums, comes across 2 prostitutes, he touched her breast but her hip kept appearing like a boys and in her eyes he say the boy – had a revelation

o   Goes to the Bar – talks about how horrid kids are these days, but they envy them

o   He returned with Taeyeong, both drunk from the bar

o   The boy is home – the snow begins to fall, there is a glow in the room

o   Taeyeong tried to pluck a feather from the goose

o   Gilho thought about killing the goose, choking it, but he didn’t – he compares himself to the goose

o   Then the goose mom scene – He asked the goose for forgiveness, he sees the goose as the boy’s mom – he sees life through the eyes of the boy

§  He saw the silhouette of a woman before he walked out on the balcony – but then when he goes out on the balcony it just the goose

§  Everything has a glow, there’s a full moon, everything has a warm glow, which contrasts the cool scheme the movie had before

o   Gilho says his final lines to the boy/ “I’ve been lonely, I’ve been lonely all my life”